Magazine Basket

I have been applying for a lot of free items online. I get subscriptions to a lot of magazines that way and once I read through them they are useless... or are they? I've been saving them hoping to find a useful way to recycle them into something else. After visiting my Mom at work recently I came across these wire-framed newspaper baskets. Cute, unique, practical and completely doable! 

What You Need:

Magazines (62 pages)

Mod Podge, watered down

Paint brush

Scissors

Patience, lots of it.

First thing's first. We need to make some paper strips for the weaving. My basket is the size of a regular piece of printer paper but you can change the instructions to fit your needs. 

To begin making the strips you will need to glue multiple pages together by overlapping them end-to-end about a half inch and then laying them out to dry. They dry in under a minute so you can stack these as you glue them. You will need 3 different lengths of strips. You will need 11 Strips made from 2 pages, 8 strips made from 3 pages, and 4 strips made from 4 pages. 

After gluing the pages together, you will need to fold them in half length-wise 3 times. You will end up with 23 strips, each a little less than an inch in width. Set aside the the 4 extra long strips. These you will use later to weave the sides in place. 

Take the 8, 3-paged strips and the 11, 2-pages strips and weave them together taking care to keep things pretty even. You will appreciate that later. If you don't know how to weave... over, under, over, under. If you still don't know how to weave, Google it. 

Bend all the edges upwards to make this next step a bit easier. Try not to get discouraged doing this first side weave. This will probably be the most difficult one but it gets much easier after this. Take one of your remaining 4-paged strips and begin weaving around the upright strips.

I found that it helped to dab a bit of glue randomly during the weave. Especially where the strip starts and ends. It helps a lot to help keep things tight. 

Once strip one is complete, breath a sigh of relief because it's smooth sailing from here on out. Repeat the process with the remaining 3 strips. If you chose not to glue as you go, be sure to at least glue the last strip. I didn't start gluing every individual weave until the third strip and I wish I had done it all the way through. It makes for a much more solid product.

Once the strips are weaved and the glue is dried, cut the access off the strip ends to make it level with the top of the basket. You will notice the tips of the cut off strips separate a bit at the tip. Easy fix. Run through them and dab glue (solid glue, not watered down) in the openings and squeeze shut. Hold it for a few seconds and move on. 

Once that is complete, your basket is done... unless you want to add one last detail. I chose to. Out of the scrap ends that you cut off, find a couple long pieces and cut them down to size. You want them to be able to lay over the edge of your basket so you will want them about an inch and a half in width. Length isn't too important as you can easily add more as you continue around the basket. When you add glue to the edges of the basket be sure to use plain glue. Do not water it down. Once you finish adding the "rim" you are finished. Stand back and admire your work! 

Stay tuned for my next blog to find something to fill it with!

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